Many of the others describe cycling holiday routes but I don't do cycling holidays. When you ride your bicycle as transport every day, all you want out of a holiday is to walk a few metres down to a beach to build sandcastles with your kids, after which you promenade down to the harbour for dinner. But hey, that's me.

What a load of tosh 'Bike Week' is. Another excuse for people to go on about leisure cycling or sport and then feel like they have done their bit for promoting cycling.

I ride my bike every day, to work, for shopping, everywhere I go, it is just normal life. Mikael, you are voicing what I have always thought that cycling is just a normal civilized way to travel around. In the article yours is the one voice of normal cycling. The London ride (page 4) is some kind of fixie road warrior thing, not an everyday ride, and all the rest are just leisure cycling.

Thank you for Cycle Chic, it is a guiding light! Since reading this and similar blogs I have started to worry less about the nut jobs in cars and the dangerous roads and more about how cool the everyday cyclists in my town look. I have started encouraging everyone to jump on their bikes with 'cycle chic'.

The image of a neighborly cycle sounds lovely! I'm so lonely on my commute sometimes. I enjoy the peacefulness, but sometimes it would be nice to see a fellow rider!

I live in Maryland on the border of DC and Virginia and while we have a plentitude of sport and leisure cyclers (and hoards of great trails!) I'm afraid the number of people that bike as transportation is close to nonexistant. In their defense, we're so built up with freeways around here there just aren't too many safe ways for a bicycle to get from Maryland to Virgina (DC is a little easier depending on where you live, but not so efficient) without some intervention despite it only being a few miles away. Trips to the shopping mall or even the grocery store are much the same way.

@Amanda: I have that bike in a different colour (the receit said 'Gucci colored') but I couldn't remember the name of the brand and I had to go down to the parking lot to check. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's a MBK Classic Shop bike. http://www.sorens-cykler.dk/Producenter/MBK+-+2009/MBK+-+Classic+Shop+3+gear+'09.htmlIt's a great bike. I ride it everyday and besides from a few flat tyres I haven't had any problems in the last two years since I bought it.

@Nipper - the London ride is not some kind of 'road warrior' thing, that's just how you have to ride in London and many other cities that don't benefit from the cycling infrastructure of CPH! I've done parts of the route myself when I used to live in London (and was one of very few 'normal' people on bikes) and the allowance for cycles is minimal. But there you go, we make do with what we have and we try to learn from more developed countries. Thanks Mikael for helping bring it to the attention of the world!